MarketStar Blog | Direct (3)

Types of Sales Channels You Need to Have in Your Growth Strategy

Before the internet, there were two sales channels: indirect and direct. If you were a brick-and-mortar business, you sold your products directly in your store. If you were a wholesaler, you sold through resellers or distributors.

In today’s world, things are a bit more complex. And choosing sales channels to reach your targeted customers takes more effort. While the internet has certainly simplified many aspects of selling, it’s also created new demands for teams to learn and utilize disparate marketing channels.

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Inside Sales Best Practices: 3 Data Analytics Technologies You Need

You already know that inside sales drives more revenue at a lower cost. However, in order to manage teams and ensure a steady flow of leads, this requires appropriate tools and technology.

As big data becomes a reality for businesses looking to manage large volumes of information, data analytics tools have emerged as a reliable way to identify trends and patterns and monitor buyer activity. These tools create a better understanding of your prospects. And while this may be a no-brainer, information-based decisions are better than arbitrary or judgmental ones. 

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Enough is Enough! Solving Lackluster Sales Performance, Once and For All

After 28 years in the world of Sales as a Service™, MarketStar has forged many lasting relationships with leaders in our field. We’ve asked Claudio Ayub, a 20-year channel veteran and Chief Channel Strategist of Perks, to discuss his view on improving sales performance through his experience as a loyalty marketing expert with broad knowledge in strategy development, market management, and channel sales planning.

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7 Must-haves to Enable your Direct Sales Team

Technology over the last five years has integrated into nearly every aspect of our lives, and it’s not just coming from Silicon Valley anymore. It’s spreading (some may think like the plague—thanks mom), from New England based start-ups to the newly termed Silicon Slopes of Utah. Huge surges of technology start-ups resembling the dot-com days have emerged. Everything has become more efficient, better integrated, and dare I say more complex. Especially as we start talking about direct sales teams

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Understanding the IT Buying Process: Tips for Selling to the IT Buyer

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The Metrics Bridge: how are you measuring sales team performance?

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3 Tips for Managing the Unmanaged Channel Partners

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The Zombie Lead

We all have them: Zombie leads who invade and spread fear in our marketing databases. Halloween is here and so is the time to talk about "zombie" leads. There are a couple of definitions of a zombie lead:

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Why Cloud Solutions Are Outsourcing in Fluffy Terms

Not long ago, “outsourcing” was a taboo subject. Outsourcing meant moving business operations offshore to Asia, Latin America, or some other region where there is cheaper labor. Thanks to the internet call centers, customer support, and other administrative services could be located anywhere in the world. That same infrastructure also powers cloud solutions that are making today’s businesses more efficient and it creates new jobs.

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MarketStar at DMA 2012 in Las Vegas

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